Limbo's Child (58 page)

“You have powers too, don’t you?”

The yo-yo dropped to the ground. Yo-yo had to pick it up and rewind it, but he didn’t say anything. Lucy skipped a few steps ahead ‘til she was side-by-side with him and could look at his face. He still didn’t look at her but just rewound his yo-yo over and over again like he had when he was in the hospital.

Lucy pulled her hair behind her ears and stared at him.

“That’s how you can get around so fast isn’t it?” She looked at him, but he just tried to avoid looking at her and wound the yo-yo again.

“That’s how you can hide so quick, isn’t it? I’ve seen you do it before.”

He looked at her with a mixture of horror and shame and she immediately tried to soften what she meant to say. “I mean…I haven’t
seen
you, not really, but I’ve seen you disappear, like, one second you’re there and the next you’re just gone.”

He said nothing but just stared at the ground.

“That’s why no one saw you after the accident, and that’s how you got around the hospital so fast. That’s how you got to Harrisburg so fast. I knew it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t see how an eleven-year-old boy could hitch all the way from Scranton without getting picked up.” She tried to get him to look at her, to let him know it was okay, that she didn’t hate or fear him, but his gaze remained fixed on the yo-yo he was winding over and over again.

“Are you a necromancer too?” she asked.

He just looked at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“That’s what I am...a necromancer,” she said the word like she was confessing to picking her nose. She hated the word and still didn’t know what it meant exactly. “Amanda…that woman I was with? She’s the one that told me. She’s a necromancer too. Apparently, we have control over the dead. She told me I can talk to the dead and make…
meat golems
. Whatever
those
are,” Lucy shuddered. She didn’t really want to know. “And it seems I can knock vampires across a room with a touch too. So, I suppose it’s not
all
bad.”

Lucy looked at Yo-yo. He was looking at her a little less nervously. Maybe it helped him feel less like a freak if he knew she was a freak too.

“So maybe you’re a necromancer too? Huh?” Lucy asked, but Yo-yo just shrugged. “I only just found out today,” Lucy went on, “How long have you known you’ve had powers? How long have you been able to do…whatever it is you do?” she asked in as tender and motherly a voice as she could muster.

“Forever,” he said flatly. Lucy was a bit envious. She had only just found out she had powers and she still didn’t know the first thing about them. He was still treating his powers like a dirty secret and didn’t feel like talking about it, but at least she had gotten him talking.

“How do you do it? I mean…what
is
it…exactly?” Lucy gingerly prodded.

He shrugged, “Don’t know,” he said at last, “I just think about it and then the shadows come, that’s all.” He stopped winding the yo-yo and started doing some of the incredible tricks Lucy had seen him do back in the hospital. It seemed to help him somehow. “I can’t go for very far or very long. It’s hard to tell where I am, but when I’m there…no one can see me. That’s the only thing that’s really good about it.” He paused. “I don’t really like it. It’s scary,” he shuddered. “That’s why…” He paused. “That’s why my Mom didn’t want me.” He rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. Lucy reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, but he pulled away. “That’s why no foster parents want me. Things…
happened
and they’d think I’m…they think I’m…I’m
evil
or something.” He looked like he was on the verge of crying. Lucy had to scrunch up her face to keep from crying herself after he said that.

Lucy looked at him and felt sorry for him. He was trying to be tough, but she could tell he was really hurt. Lucy could only imagine what potential foster parents would say if they found out she could talk to the dead. Her mom had known though. If she were alive, maybe they could have adopted Yo-yo. Maybe he could have joined the family and they could have been a great big freaky family with freaky powers. Then she realized that aside from that psycho Amanda and those creepy vampires, well two vampires and an orderly, who weren’t exactly the best role models, she was the only other person that could ever understand what he was going through.

Lucy took a few quick steps and got ahead of him, stopped and faced him. He came to an abrupt stop and let the yo-yo run out to the end of its string and just looked at her nervously for a moment. She stood there not knowing what to say to him, until she threw her arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug. He stood there awkwardly, but eventually he hugged her back. When she let go they started walking again, but she held on to his arm. After walking for a while she decided he needed to hear something.

“You’re not evil, Yo-yo,” Lucy said at last.

“W-What do you m-mean…” he started to stammer.

“Your powers don’t make you evil. They aren’t evil – they just…
are
.”

“H-how do you know?”

“Because,” she said, confidently cutting him off, “You didn’t leave after the accident. You came to the hospital to see if I was okay, didn’t you?”

He shrugged at this and Lucy could tell he needed some more convincing.

“You could have left after we jumped out of the car and those creeps grabbed me but you didn’t, did you?”

“No. I guess not,” Yo-yo said meekly.

“And you could have left me when that thing chased us over the embankment, but you didn’t.”

Yo-yo nodded.

“You didn’t leave me and I’m not going to leave you now.”

Yo-yo seemed to cheer up a bit at this news.

She smiled back and had a sudden thought. “Hey…you know what? We’re like superheroes, Yo-yo!!” She bumped him with her hip the way her mom did her when they used to go on walks together and her mom was trying to get her attention. “We both have superpowers!! You and your shadow-thing and me and my magic, anti-vampire finger!” She pointed her finger like a pistol and made a ‘kapow’ sound. She wasn’t very good at it, but Yo-yo laughed anyway. She got a little more serious. “That’s why they’re after us, Yo-yo, but we won’t let them get us will we?!” She reached down and slid her hand into his. Her mom always sounded most confident when things were at their worst. She wasn’t certain if this was an act or not, but it did make her feel better. She tried to act that way now for Yo-yo. “That’s why we have to depend on each other now. We’re family now.”

Yo-yo looked at her especially keenly when she said the word ‘family.’ She decided he needed a little more convincing.

“Soooo… it’s a
deal
?” she said expectantly.

There was a short pause. “Deal,” Yo-yo said quietly.

They walked on a little while longer silently hand in hand before she said something else she had meant to say.

“Thank you,” she said quietly and she gave his hand a little squeeze and leaned her head onto his shoulder for a moment.

“For what?” he said, somewhat confused.

“For saving my life…back there.”

He gave a timid squeeze back and smiled. She smiled to, but as she sneaked a peak at him out of the corner of her eye, he returned to that far-off, impassive, dead-eyed stare he always seemed to get whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

“Oh I
needed
this,” Tim said as he dunked another fry into his vanilla shake. Miles looked on with mixed feelings of envy and revulsion. Tim had got quite a spread. A vanilla shake, fries, a short stack of pancakes with a side of scrapple
and
a bacon double cheeseburger and a large diet Pepsi.

Tim caught Miles looking at him. “Oh, I’m sorry, dude,” Tim said, licking the shake off his fingers, “Do you want some?”

Miles sighed, “Nah, mate, it’s fine. Couldna taste a thing anyway.” Miles looked into the rapidly cooling cup of black coffee he had ordered. He couldn’t taste that either, but he didn’t want to stand out so he had to order something.

“Dude, that stinks,” Tim said taking another bite of his cheeseburger, “So you can’t twaste a theen?” Tim asked around large mouthfuls, wiping the mayo and ketchup from the corners of his mouth.

“Nah, nothin’ but blood…the rest jus’ tastes of dust or ashes.”

“Bummer.” Tim took a big slurp of the shake to wash down that monstrous bite of cheeseburger. “That’s gotta suck.”

Miles nodded. Miles had never even had a milkshake or cheeseburger before he was turned. A century of American food had passed him by. At first there hadn’t been much more than the roasts and potatoes of home, but come the fifties there was suddenly pizza and Chinese food, then cheese curls and Twinkies. Every year there was some new snack he wanted to try, but it never mattered. It was all tasteless to him.

“You must get tired of it, just salty and acrid all the time?”

Miles waggled his head and slid the coffee mug back and forth between his hands. “Mostly…but there’s a bit more to it than that.”

“Like what?” Tim said, shoving another five french fries into his mouth simultaneously.

Miles shrugged, “I dunno, it duzzint always taste the same, everyone is different.”

“Really?!” Tim sounded surprised as he folded a whole pancake into his mouth and rammed it down with a fork.

Miles widened his eyes at this, but he wished he could do the same. It took him a second to remember what they were talking about. “Oh, yeah,” Miles went on, “Blood is blood, but everyone tastes a wee bit different.”

“How?”

“Oh, Sky coulda tell ya better stories. He’s a right connoisseur he is. Picks out his victims like hoighty-toighty prats pick out wines or cheese.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he likes them college girls, the rich ones that take care of themselves. He sez some taste like flowers or coconut, some saffron and others strawberries, but he keeps a better clientele than I do. Most of me own just taste like what they bloody got pissed on last…bad beer, heroin or thunderbird usually.”

Tim snorted. “You’re making this vampire gig look really glamorous you know that?” as he shoveled the grey, gelatinous scrapple into his maw.

Miles raised his cold mug of coffee to him in mock salute.

Just then, Sky walked up and slid into the booth beside Tim.

“Well, that does it. We’re cooked. Might as well stake us out in the sun and take the easy way out before Hokharty gets to us.”

“No luck?” Tim said talking around the scrapple.

Sky just looked at him with disgust. “What part of ‘we’re cooked’ do you not understand?”

Tim swallowed and went back to his shake and fries.

“I asked the waitresses and the guy tending the cash register. They all knew Lucy and her mom, maybe not by name, but they came in here every month or so, usually for late-night snacks, but nobody knows where they lived.” Sky picked up his own coffee and pretended to sip it. Even shirtless, in a white blazer, with a plastic lollipop he was much more convincing at looking normal than Miles.

After a short pause, Tim asked the question on everyone’s mind, “So now what?” But there was no answer.

Miles thought over his options and from the nervous way Sky was pretending to drink his coffee and the way Tim was shoving down the scrapple like it was his last meal, he could tell they were doing the same. They could run. If it had been Wallach, they wouldn’t have gotten far. He doubted Hokharty and Graber would be any easier to escape. They could go back and admit failure. Wallach would have killed them for that too. Hokharty seemed a lot more placid a master than Wallach, so maybe he wouldn’t flip out and kill them all. But then Hokharty seemed bloody calm right before he turned Ulami and Forzgrim into a pile of butchered, undead meat too. Truth was, no one knew what Hokharty would do or even what he was up to.

Miles looked around the small diner. It had about a dozen booths and a few seats at the counter. It wasn’t much more than a grill and a cashier tacked on to a convenience store and a gas station. There were maybe another fifteen other people there, mostly truckers or people coming on to the late shift or stopping on their way for a coffee or a meal. If anyone thought the three young men in the corner were a bit odd, they didn’t show it. It was a place where people came and went unnoticed, and they undoubtedly had many customers they saw once and never again. It seemed the perfect place to contemplate the end of his life, well the end of his undead life. No one would notice him when he was gone either.

The diner door opened and a man with a mustache, broad gut, white shirt, tweed jacket and tie walked in. He stepped around the room and went over to chat with the guy at the register before stepping into the center of the small restaurant.

“Excuse me!” he announced in a commanding voice, “Is the owner of a cream colored Chevy Impala in here?”

Tim made a slight movement as if to turn around and stand up, but before he moved an inch, Sky put his hand on his shoulder and slowly guided him back in his seat.

“What?” Tim said, annoyed.

Sky cautiously raised his coffee mug and used it to conceal his mouth. “He’s a
cop,
” he said in a low sing-songy voice.

Tim whipped around to take a look before Sky hoarsely whispered, “Don’t look, you moron!”